Opinion

  The Electoral Count Act of 1887 is badly written, and its flaws present dangers to the country. The current bipartisan interest in revising the law, which sets forth how Congress handles challenges to electoral votes after a presidential election, is therefore welcome. But there are many ways a reform could go wrong, and legislators will have to be careful ...

The most notable record at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics won’t be recorded by a skier or skater. Instead it’ll be set by NBCUniversal. When the flame goes dark, the US network will likely have recorded the most poorly viewed Winter Games in history. Covid, half-empty stadiums, human-rights concerns and boycotts have depressed viewers and ratings. They’ve also battered China’s ...

Motivating people is hard, especially when you’re trying to convince them to join you on a perilous quest that may not succeed. So perhaps you can understand, once you stop laughing, why Mark Zuckerberg has encouraged his employees to call themselves “Metamates” instead of “colleagues” or “co-workers” or “Steve.” It’s nautical! We’re going on a swashbuckling adventure! Ahoy, Metamaties! But ...

  Think your life has been unadventurous over the past few years, as the pandemic and closed borders have kept you bottled up at home? Spare a thought for the mining sector. An industry built on the romance and horror of finding riches on the wild frontier — from the Klondike to Kimberley, Kolyma and Katanga — has for years ...

  High above the Bank of England, a weather vane tracking the wind direction connects directly to a dial in the stately building’s Court Room. In the 1800s, the bank’s directors met there, and knowing which way the wind was blowing was crucial. An easterly breeze meant that ships, loaded with commodities such as copper and wheat, would be sailing ...

The Russian Defense Ministry’s announcement that troops were beginning to relocate to their permanent bases after drills on the Ukrainian border is not yet the denouement of the crisis that Russian President Vladimir Putin created and then US President Joe Biden amplified with alarmist rhetoric in recent months. Still, the world’s attention has been focused on the possibility of a ...

A South African biotech company has recreated small quantities of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine. Its achievement, done in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO), is part of a broader plan to help low- and middle-income countries become less reliant on US and European drug makers, which have been slow to send their vaccines. The WHO is investing $100 million over ...

  Wall Street’s top brass spent months grousing about how they were struggling in the war for talent before doling out the biggest bonuses in years. Goldman Sachs Group Inc just lost another top dealmaker to private equity, with Jennifer Davis moving to Bain Capital. Now, fresh data on pay at big private-equity firms appear to justify the banks’ complaints ...

  Myanmar’s junta is under pressure in a way it hasn’t been in decades. Challenging its military might are armed civilian groups known as the People’s Defense Force — a grassroots insurgency made up of citizens including farmers, doctors, teachers, home-makers and engineers — all determined to overthrow the generals who took control of the country in a coup just ...

Diplomatic efforts to forestall Russia’s threatened attack on Ukraine still aren’t over — and it appears that discussing Ukraine’s future relationship with Nato isn’t quite as unthinkable as the US and its allies have maintained. That’s good. Making a success of any such approach won’t be easy but, if the alternative is war, it’s worth a try. Shuttling between Moscow ...